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Bruins take some lustre away from Canadiens

Even if they emerge victorious from the unexpected quagmire into which they have skated, the Montreal Canadiens will find themselves diminished.

That's just a fact.

Two weeks ago, the Habs were a sexy choice to take a hard run at the Stanley Cup. Newspapers were dubbing it the "Drive for Twenty-Five," rookie goalie Carey Price was being compared to legends like Ken Dryden and Patrick Roy and a first-place finish in the Eastern Conference was evidence of a team poised to continue playing until mid-June.

Today, not so much.

The Canadiens may yet vanquish the gritty Boston Bruins, but it will take an awful lot before others look at them in quite the same way again this spring.

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Blame the Bruins. They've done a pretty impressive job of exposing Montreal's vulnerabilities in six games, going from a club that seemed in awe of the Habs in Game 1 to a team that has outplayed the Canadiens for arguably three of the last four games and pounded 10 goals past Price in the last two matches.

The Habs were supposed to be a team of speed, but in the past two games they've been unable to contain quicksilver Boston winger Phil Kessel.

Montreal was supposed to own the superior offence, but even when the Canadiens came up with four goals on Saturday night, the Bruins managed five.

Boston bench boss Claude Julien, meanwhile, seems to have gained an edge over Guy Carbonneau of the Canadiens, who hasn't been able to pull the right switches to get his team back to its preferred style of play. Julien and his savvy assistant, Craig Ramsay, have come up with ways to short-circuit Montreal's potent power play and the concept of methodically working the bodies of the finesse Montreal forwards and D-men has paid dividends.

In other words, even if the Habs win Game 7 tonight, their next opponent is likely to probe the very same weaknesses the Bruins have exposed.

The Rangers, you have to believe, are now the favourites to win the East, with Pittsburgh close behind. New York dismantled New Jersey in five games and the Penguins swept the defending conference champs from Ottawa and, in so doing, those two teams demonstrated the potential for serious springtime success.

Montreal, by contrast, looks less impressive than it did when the playoffs started and even victory tonight won't change that.

Maybe the expectations were unreasonable, particularly given the fact the Habs didn't even make the playoffs a year ago and so many players on their roster hadn't played a single post-season match before this spring.

But those were the expectations and the Habs have clearly fallen short of them. The top seed in the west, Detroit, struggled more than most believed they would with Nashville, but in the end the Red Wings won in six games and for the most part dominated the Predators, with only goalie Dan Ellis making it close. The Wings didn't knock anybody's socks off, but they still look like a very good bet to make it to the Western Conference final, at least.

Montreal, on the other hand, seems to have lost its swagger. Up 1-0 in the second period Saturday, they reverted to a rather conservative neutral zone trap, as though one goal would be enough and they didn't have the imagination to pursue a more creative game plan.

Nonetheless, the joint will be rockin' tonight in Montreal, the same rink where the Habs were booed Thursday after a 5-1 loss, but where fans will won't need clapping hands or "Make Noise" signs on the video scoreboard to make an ear-splitting din by game time.

Many of their most hardcore fans, you can bet, still believe in these Canadiens.

It's just the rest of the hockey world that has lost faith.

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